{"id":7177,"date":"2025-10-16T02:42:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T02:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/7177\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T02:42:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T02:42:06","slug":"san-diego-unified-oks-move-to-block-class-schedules-for-three-high-schools-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/7177\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego Unified OKs move to block class schedules for three high schools \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three San Diego Unified high schools \u2014 Mira Mesa High, Madison High and Canyon Hills High \u2014 will move to a block class schedule starting next fall.<\/p>\n

The change trustees approved Tuesday evening is a scaled-back plan from the district, after community members voiced concerns at a September board meeting.<\/p>\n

The new schedule \u2014 known as 4\u00d74<\/a>, with generally four courses per day each semester, rather than six year-long classes \u2014 will let students take more classes overall throughout their career.<\/p>\n

Deputy Superintendent Nicole DeWitt had said previously that the three schools were looking at a hybrid 4\u00d74 schedule that would let some classes, such as Advanced Placement, be yearlong.<\/p>\n

The growing number of courses that San Diego Unified students must take in order to graduate has been a driving factor in the changes.<\/p>\n

The district\u2019s original plan was to have even more schools try out different forms of the 4\u00d74 schedule.<\/p>\n

But at a meeting last month where people spoke out against that plan and administrators and trustees expressed confusion about it, a vote was postponed, and the plan was scaled back.<\/p>\n

Under the plan approved Tuesday, other schools that aren\u2019t part of the initial effort can decide whether a 4\u00d74 schedule would meet their needs in the following years.<\/p>\n

If they decide it doesn\u2019t, the district says, schools should design schedules to give students chances to complete multiple career and technical education pathways.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday night, principals and instructional coordinators from the three schools described the community engagement they\u2019ve already undertaken on it.<\/p>\n

At the September meeting, some community members voiced concern that the changes would lead to less instructional time per class.<\/p>\n

The leader of the district\u2019s teachers union also objected, criticizing what he called a top-down approach to implementation. DeWitt said the district and union are in active bargaining.<\/p>\n

Fewer people spoke at Tuesday\u2019s meeting than the last one, but more speakers spoke in favor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 4\u00d74 schedule has made a big difference for students like me,\u201d said Chloe Fernandez, a 10th grader at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts. She said the schedule helps her find the balance between her academic classes and dance.<\/p>\n

But parent Shaun Hunter raised concerns about implementation, including the timeline. \u201cMy daughter has to pick classes, as mentioned, very soon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Much of the research around the benefits and drawbacks of different types of class schedules is outdated and inconclusive.<\/p>\n

But researchers who spoke with The San Diego Union-Tribune<\/a> recently said a block schedule helps students facing many graduation requirements, as is the case in San Diego Unified.<\/p>\n

Sarah Fine, a professor of education at UC San Diego, also pointed out that longer class periods can lend themselves to deeper learning.<\/p>\n

The district plans to collect, analyze and learn from its own data on the class schedules.<\/p>\n

Trustee Shana Hazan said the district\u2019s recent improvements to its data-tracking systems will now allow it to evaluate the success of the 4\u00d74 schedules. She hopes to measure whether the schedule change makes students more motivated.<\/p>\n

A pilot implementation of the new block schedules will begin for Mira Mesa High, Madison High and Canyon Hills High next school year, along with data collection and monitoring.<\/p>\n

The year after that, in the 2027-28 school year, the district will keep monitoring things and will produce a report on the pre- and post-implementation data.<\/p>\n

And in the 2028-29 school year, the rest of the district\u2019s high schools can decide if the 4\u00d74 plan will work for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three San Diego Unified high schools \u2014 Mira Mesa High, Madison High and Canyon Hills High \u2014 will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[15,181,23,100,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-7177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-san-diego-headlines","14":"tag-san-diego-news","15":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}